Mindful Training
On Wednesday I travelled to the Peterborough area to meet with people at Mind who run a drop-in and support centre. It was great to hear their thoughts and experiences around the subject of self-injury, and I hope our training package was of some help to them in their work.
FirstSigns travels all over the UK to deliver Self-Injury Awareness Training to healthcare workers, and it’s an honour to be involved with groups who are on the front line, directly helping people who self-injure.
We’ve done so much training this summer, and I’ve been dreadful at letting you know where we’ve been and what we’ve done! I do like blogging about everything, but I’ve neglected to keep you informed about our real-life training offering.
Later this year we’re involved with a conference, and I must share the details with you soon!
I feel like I’ve travelled a thousand miles this summer on the trains (prob more)! I reckon we’ll expand our training programme next year, but that we’ll take a break for the winter – there’s so much to do and so little time!
If you are a professional healthcare worker (like a volunteer at a support centre) please do consider what FirstSigns can offer you and your organisation – we’ve got a new Message Board that’s only for professionals, and it might be a great place for you to meet and talk with other healthcare people about the difficult and intense subject of self-injjury / self-harm. Take a look and join our growing group of professionals at: http://professionals.FirstSigns.org.uk
Wedge
1 Comment
Jules
September 22, 2008Wedge really has travelled thousands of miles this year to provide Self-Injury Awareness training across the country, sometimes spending 8 or 10 hours on trains to provide just one session. And it’s not just about the travelling, it’s about the time too. Wedge has given up a great deal of personal time, including weekends and holidays from work, in order to maintain our hectic training schedule – and he’s never once let anyone down. On top of that (and he’d never say this himself!) his feedback is always excellent and many of our training requests come from recommendations and word of mouth – a true testament to how well his sessions are always received.
That’s why I get so upset when someone might ask me: ‘Why isn’t Wedge around?’ just because he hasn’t been seen on the message board for two days. Our message board is very important to us, and in some ways is the heart of our community, but it’s only a very small part of what we do at FirstSigns. If Wedge isn’t seen on the message board, it’s because he’s busy training, writing, organising, web designing, producing, creating and developing FirstSigns – and that’s on top of his real working and personal life (yes, we do have real lives too!)
If it weren’t for Wedge’s selfless dedication and extreme hard work, FirstSigns wouldn’t exist. And don’t forget, prior to FirstSigns we were LifSIGNS – so it’s been seven years of non-stop work for Wedge.
I sincerely hope he does ease back on training over the winter and takes some well overdue time to think about himself for once.
Jules